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NASCAR Through the Gears: Denny Hamlin wins, Kyle Larson goes splat, and more courtroom talk

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NASCAR Through the Gears: Denny Hamlin wins, Kyle Larson goes splat, and more courtroom talk

Sometimes, it’s the little things.

And more little things.

Before long, you’ve built yourself a little stack and you have something. Might even be a trophy. 

We’ll let Denny Hamlin explain all that in a bit. He’s happy to oblige because he and his team parlayed their little things into something big Sunday at Darlington, where Hamlin got his second straight win before pointing toward Bristol, where, by the way, he’s won two of the last three. 

Denny’s win also got some air time for Rusty Wallace.

Kyle Larson wished he’d never gotten out of bed Sunday.

Brad Keselowski wishes he’d stayed in bed since February.

And the lawyers are making a killing in NASCAR these days.

Buckle in and grab a gear because we’ll explain it all as we get up to speed.

First Gear: Stacking tenths with Denny Hamlin

If you pay attention to pit stops, you’ll notice there’s a crew member who reaches across the pit wall with a small sign attached to a long stick. The sign is positioned in the middle of the front of the pit box — the driver’s assigned parking spot for servicing.

Modern pit crews work out daily on their assignments, nowadays looking to see just how far under 10 seconds they can take the modern pit stop. The choreography is rehearsed time and time again, and it’s done with the assumption their driver will park his hot rod with its nose touching the middle of the aforementioned pit sign. 

Miss it by a bit, and the choreography is off by a bit. Just a bit, sure, but tenths of a second, especially if followed by the loss of another tenth and maybe another, can mean multiple lost positions on the track. That sign, by the way, is just one of the keys in a pit-road dance where so many things can go wrong.

Denny explains it, and also sort of explains how he went from third to first to Victory Lane during a pre-overtime pit stop Sunday at Darlington.

“I knew, coming in third, I was going to have to have my best roll of the day. That is, my fastest pit roll, my fastest speed into the box. I needed to put it perfectly on the sign, so they don’t need to adjust.

“I needed to stack tenths and tenths and tenths on my side of the job. As soon as they dropped the jack on the right side, I was like, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be a heater.’”

Next thing you know, you have your 56th career Cup victory, the 11th most in history, and you’re relegating Rusty Wallace and his 55 wins to 12th. Rusty still has one more championship than Denny, for what it’s worth.

Second Gear: William Byron sees it all go away

It’s not often you compare Darlington to Formula One.

Sunday, William Byron was making it look like one of those F1 races where the best driver/car combo wins the pole, gets a proper jump at the start, and leads wire to wire and leaves race fans thinking, “Well, at least the scenery is nice.”

Honestly, who leads the first 243 laps of a race at Darlington.

Trick question: No one does. Or, we should say, no one ever had. But Billy the Kid simply outclassed the other 37 racers until he came out on the wrong side of sequencing during a green-flag pit cycle. He never led another of the 54 remaining laps.

But winning the first two stages let him bankroll two playoff points that might come in handy this fall.

Third Gear: Kyle Larson stinks for a day, Brad Keselowski for a month (or two, actually)

You might think it’s always easy to be Kyle Larson at the racetrack, but if you look at his race-by-race record, you know he turns in a handful of stinkers each year. He’s not alone in that, of course, and he generally balances it with many more good weeks than bad.

Sunday at Darlington, though, was particularly ugly. A Lap 4 crash coming off Turn 2 sent him to the garage, where he sat in his car for a good chunk of the afternoon while his team made repairs. He re-entered the race 160 laps down (yes, 160), but you keep pluggin’ because the one or two spots you might gain might make a difference down the road in the standings.

Kyle indeed gained back one spot, but it ultimately came with a price: yet another wreck, in the late stages, when he slowed coming off Turn 2 (again!) and was punted by Bubba Wallace. That’s the caution that cost Ryan Blaney the win that went to Hamlin.

Meanwhile, Brad Keselowski finished 33rd Sunday and has finished 26th or worse in six of eight starts this year. His best is an 11th at Vegas.

But some silver lining for Kez: He started 20th Sunday and moved to sixth at the end of Stage 1. He continued running with the top 10 in Stage 2, but a vibrating rear wheel led to a spin, a flat tire and two lost laps. 

Next comes Bristol, and what could go wrong there? Don’t ask.

Fourth Gear: All rise

Court is back in session. And this time, it’s not the usual suspects. Instead of the ongoing legal drama with NASCAR and race teams 23XI and Front Row, it’s two teams that usually battle away from the main spotlight.

Jimmie Johnson’s Legacy Motor Club filed suit this past week against Rick Ware Racing. Apparently, earlier this year, Ware agreed to sell Jimmie a charter in the future. At dispute is just how far into the future. Word on the street indicates Ware is thinking 2027, while Jimmie seems to recall it being 2026. 

And that’s not all from the courthouse. Just about as soon as the copyright complaint by Lamar Jackson against Junior Earnhardt became big news, it was settled when Junior’s marketing team tweaked the styling of its No. 8 on merchandising.

If nothing else, we learned that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is still operating at full speed. 

— Email Ken Willis at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR: Denny Hamlin stacks ’em, Kyle Larson smacks ’em at Darlington



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